Right from the project launch, there has been great potential for our Olympics project to address a number of subject areas. One of the first things students suggested was Olympics-themed art, so I was pleased to provide some opportunities this week for students to create art projects that linked to their learning. After we learned about the Olympic rings and Olympic flag earlier in the week, students came up with the idea of creating art featuring the rings. Other students really wanted to focus on pictures that showed the different sports they have been learning about. I looked for a few different Olympic-themed art ideas as well and shared them with my class. On Friday, students selected an Olympics-themed art project that they wanted to complete. Some students made Olympic flags, others painted the Olympic rings and some colored pictures depicting the different events.
We photographed our art projects because of an idea the students had come up with on our second Skype call this week. After sharing our research findings with the Kindergartens and hearing about their research, we decided it would be nice to do something for our Olympic athletes. Students came up with the ideas of sending letters, pictures/art, small gifts or cards. We talked about the idea of postcards to combine their desire to send both pictures and messages. The Kindergartens had used Autocollage to make cards for the seniors in their community, so they suggested we use that tool to make an interesting collage for the front of our postcards. (Teachers can download AutoCollage for free at www.pil-network.com if you’d like to try out the tool.) Now we’ve got some great pictures to use and we are looking forward to the next step of making our first Autocollage with the Kindergartens!